There’s an excellent scene in an old episode of the comedy series Family Guy that occurs after Brian, the family dog, learns he has a human son named Dylan. I know, I know, this is already going off the rails, but stick with me for a sec.

Brian is sitting in a bar with his buddies when they notice a news report that a plane has been forced to make a crash landing at LaGuardia. The following exchange occurs.

Brian: “Oh man, I’ll tell ya, now that I’m a parent I can’t even watch stories like that. I just think, you know, I just think ‘oh my God, what if Dylan were on that plane?’ Oh my God, I just don’t know what I would do. I don’t know what I would do.”

Quagmire: “Yeah, I understand that would be tough.”

Brian: “Oh, oh no, oh no, no no no Quagmire, you do not understand. You do not understand. Until you have a child, until you have a child, you do not understand. Okay?”

Quagmire: “Damn it.”

The jab at the emotional self-righteousness that comes with parenthood works because it’s funny and it’s embarrassing and it’s true. I think if we’re honest with ourselves as parents, we all know we’re guilty of it. Who among us hasn’t uttered something along the lines of, “Oh yeah, you saw Summer Blockbuster X? Before little Joey was born, I used to see all the latest movies, but parenthood is very time consuming. You’ll learn that. Ha ha, oh goodness, how it changes your life. You really don’t know how much it changes things until you have kids.”

I mean, the entire previous paragraph was basically me saying, “Don’t worry, I’m a parent, so I know this stuff.”

That oversensitive expertise we suffer from is one of two reasons that couple of stupid, throwaway emails written by some bureaucrat on behalf of Peter MacKay have turned out to be such a big deal. On Mother’s Day, an email signed by MacKay congratulated women for changing diapers and packing lunches in addition to going to work. Standard “Supermoms are great” stuff. But put next to the Father’s Day email, which painted fathers as the shapers of “the minds and futures of the next generation,” it was a time machine back to an era when Mother washed dishes and kept the kids quiet while Father had a scotch and read the evening paper, after which the children gathered at the foot of his chair to absorb wisdom. Or something.

Even I was all, “Heyyyy, wait a second. I’m a parent and I work hard and I take my older son to soccer and I change my younger son’s diapers! Do you have any idea how horrible changing diapers is? It’s the worst!” And my wife wondered if she could maybe help shape a mind.

And then I remembered that, as a parent (heeere we go again), I know parenthood is about as thankless a job as there is. The other day, my son asked for a smoothie, so my wife bought him one. He drank basically none of it, which prompted my wife to suggest maybe we’ll just skip the smoothie next time if he isn’t going to finish it. To which the four-year-old responded, “Well actually Mama, I ordered it for you so you should thank me.” What?! I mean, scientists working around the clock probably couldn’t come up with a less appropriate response to someone doing a nice thing for you.

But then I remembered parenthood has its own rewards (I won’t bore you with them here), so who gives a full diaper if Peter MacKay and his lackeys understand your life? As a standalone issue, it couldn’t be more irrelevant.

The second reason the emails were a big deal, and the problem for Peter MacKay, is that they couldn’t fit more perfectly into the narrative he’s been building for himself. And, hilariously enough, it was his own parental This Is How Things Are Now attitude that got him into legitimate hot water. He reportedly told a meeting of lawyers in Toronto that women weren’t getting federally appointed court jobs because they “aren’t applying” and that, as a new father, he understood women’s reluctance to leave the home to pursue careers because women have a special bond with their children (heyyyy!!! What about my bond?!). That came on the heels of a media availability the day he released proposed anti-prostitution legislation during which he, and the government, couldn’t have come off more paternalistic. Here’s Minister Dad, telling women how they’re victims who need the government to protect them from their poor life choices and all the “perverts” out there.

Is Peter MacKay sexist? I don’t know. I don’t know him. I can’t say he is based solely on a couple of dumb emails that he probably barely read before signing them, though. But held against his record lately, I understand why a lot of people think he is.

James Gordon is a member of the Citizen’s editorial board and, in case you didn’t know, is a parent. Follow him at Twitter.com/SensReporter

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.